Top 5 Red Herrings of US Farm Policy

By SALLY HERRIN

The resignation of Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords from the Republican
Party could change things for US agriculture. Two mighty farm-state
champions, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Senate
Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), have a chance to
pass farm legislation which protects national food security, the
environment, and our small, independent owner/operator food and fiber
producers, the farm and ranch families of America.

Daschle's Senate majority is as thin as that of Republican Trent
Lott before him, and everyone in Washington knows it. Corporations
with dogs in the fight pave the road to any Farm Bill with enormous
lobbying efforts. Food processors Cargill, ADM, ConAgra and merging
Tyson/IBP, banking and insurance giants, and other beneficiaries of
the "new global economy" make campaign contributions to like-minded
candidates and party war chests. They also give to right-wing
commodity and producer groups that serve as Judas goats, confusing
farmers and legislators about the crisis of farm income that is the
result of more than a quarter century of export-based farm
policy.

A bipartisan, good-faith effort could forge a new farm policy to
restore price-impacting tools to American agriculture producers.
Non-recourse loans set at profitable levels, a farmer-owned reserve,
meaningful market reform and anti-trust enforcement, and production
control incentives would give farmers and ranchers a fair price in a
competitive market for what they produce.

But the House and Senate will have to puzzle their way past a
number of major red herrings. These are public policy traps laid for
Congress, and they are:

Business as usual: Export volume of major agricultural
commodities has not increased in 25 years, despite forecasts and
promises of increased exports by many presidential administrations.
Value of exports to producers, in inflation-adjusted dollars, has
declined by 30-40% for these commodities in that same quarter
century. Export-based farm policy has created a flood of cheap
product for the grain and meat traders, and stolen value from
producers.

And now, Bush's Agriculture secretary thinks exports will increase
as a result of new trade agreements! During the Nixon administration,
graffiti writers asked "Why is the government always lying?" Look for
this folk wisdom to appear in bar bathrooms across rural America this
summer.

Expanded role for insurance: This dog still won't hunt.
Subsidies for more disaster and crop insurance enhance profits for
big insurance carriers, but nobody really believes that a large-scale
system of income or price insurance can work. Farmers and ranchers
will tell you, if they got a fair price in the market for what they
produced, they could buy their own insurance. Thanks very much.

Fast track authority for the president: No president needs
or ought to have so-called fast track authority. Congress has the
responsibility to examine trade agreements closely, to determine the
interests of this nation and others, and to approve agreements that
benefit Americans and uphold social and environmental standards for
all parties. Fast track authority will not save American agricultural
producers. It will only let George W. Bush help the grain trade drive
commodity prices down and speed up the race between farmers here and
around the world to the bottom of the economic barrel.

Counter-cyclical payments: This past year Congress approved
about $22 billion in emergency and other payments to farmers.
President Bush wants to cap next year's payments at $5.5 billion. The
surplus evaporated as the dot.com economy tanked and the president
gave away the tax base. The truth is, the money to bail farmers out
year after year just won't be there.

Welfare-style payments to farmers are politically unsustainable.
Calling payments to producers "counter-cyclical" confuses people into
thinking that commodity price is determined by forces outside
anyone's control. Price is not the product of great cycles like
weather and seasons. A handful of grain traders in the US set the
world price, in the absence of true commodity floor prices
established in farm programs.

Making the Farm Bill into a Conservation Bill: This most
dangerous red herring trades on the power of good people. Everyone
these days likes the Conservation and Wetlands Reserve Programs, and
some would make them the centerpiece of the next Farm Bill. These are
the programs comedians love to hate -- paying farmers not to grow
something -- but it's no laughing matter. CRP and WRP protect
America's environmental "capital" -- our soil, water, critter habitat
and more. They discourage the farming of lands that, thanks to
technology, can be farmed, but which, environmentally, ought to be
left in cover, native or otherwise.

Farmers who lack basic economic tools to impact price see the
advantage of conservation programs to help curb overproduction.
Environmental groups are vocal and enthusiastic.

An aggressive coalition of church, consumer, environmental and
rural interests can shape America's future to mean farm and ranch
families keep on producing the safe, reliable food supply that is our
heritage. Environmental groups should not let themselves be used to
highjack the Farm Bill. CRP and WRP, without the other price
impacting tools farmers need, won't stop the hemorrhaging in rural
America.

Crane-lovers and tree-huggers are among my favorite people. But
the environmental community needs to know that no separate peace is
possible in this matter. Abandon family farming and ranching now, and
we secure the future of factory farming. Soon, there won't be much
country left to save.

Want to help? Go to www.acga.org. Read everything, then call the
US Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121, get staff or a member on the
phone, and start talking about price. And conservation.